


Mary Mary

by Kintatsujo



Series: Needles and Pins [1]
Category: Ib (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Drowning, Eye Horror, Garry is sorta there as an absentee character too, Murder, because this is not a Christmas story, waiting until minutes after midnight to post, you have to squint for the Ib/Garry but it's there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 04:54:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1102661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kintatsujo/pseuds/Kintatsujo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The real world isn't quite everything Mary had hoped for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mary Mary

**Author's Note:**

> Many people write in the "Together Forever" universe as if Mary is either notably younger or older than Ib. I tend to suspect that the Gallery would have an easier time overlaying memories of Mary as being Ib's twin, because then there's still only one pregnancy for Ib's parents to remember, and them always having the same teachers up to the age of nine and the same bedroom is less of an extreme stretch. It's just what makes sense to me.
> 
> Also there are other things I should be working onnnn *faceplants into laptop screen*

It was after the fourth incident that their parents sent Mary to the psychiatric ward.  Ib wasn't sure what had changed; she remembered her sister as nothing but sweet, always, although perhaps with a hard edge when she was angry.  
  
But at some point, around when they had turned nine, Mary suddenly acted as though she had never seen a dog before.  The first three incidents had seemed innocuous if cruel; uncharacteristic nastiness, nothing more.  The fourth time, however, she'd viciously attacked their neighbor's prized toy poodle with a pallet knife-- a pallet knife!  No one had any idea where she'd even gotten the implement.  
  
The animal had nearly died, and Mary found herself at the Ravenwing Home for Troubled Children.  Her therapists confided in their mother that it wasn't just dogs; Mary reacted strangely toward birds, horses, nearly everything other than fish and cats.  Rabbits were fine too, of course, although Ib remembered that she'd once acted surprised at the stuffed rabbits on Ib's side of the bedroom.  It had been after their first ever visit to an art gallery; Ib remembered it because it had been so strange.  
  
Had that been the moment things had changed?  Ib couldn't be sure in the years after; the first nine years of her life had always been a vague blur where Mary had been concerned, a sweet smile and a golden haired figure always at her side, a cold hand in hers (Mary's hands were almost always freezing).  
  
But Mary hated art galleries, so maybe there was a connection.  
  
Then, after three months of Mary crying to come home, sobbing every time Ib saw her and desperately reaching to fold her sister into her arms, Mary and one of the Ravenwing nurses went missing.  
  
At first it was clearly an abduction case; Mary was generally agreed to be almost surreally beautiful for an eleven year old child, and her alleged abductor had been a tall young man who would have easily been able to overpower her.  Ib saw photographs of him later on the news, and he'd certainly looked strong, if a bit lanky.  
  
There was something weirdly familiar about the line of his jaw and the way his fringe had fallen into his eyes.  Perhaps she'd seen him during one of their visits, although supposedly the nurse had been new.  
  
Then the young man's mutilated body was found stuffed awkwardly into the back of a storage closet, cleaning supplies arranged carefully to disguise his figure, and the nature of the investigation changed.  There was still a slight chance of finding Mary's body, they said, but after the first forty-eight hours there was only the slimmest of chances she was alive.  
  
But two months later Mary showed up on their doorstep, weeping that she had been lost.  Ib's parents were overjoyed and didn't question it.  Ib wondered, though.  Where was the step from dogs to humans?  
  
How could she even think such things.  Ib always felt guilty wondering about the nurse at Ravenwing, but she couldn't stop herself.  For a time she even had dreams about it, weird narratives where Mary tortured the young man to death with knives hooked like a rose's thorns.  Although maybe it wasn't exactly the nurse at Ravenwing; he'd had brown hair, not that odd shade of lavender.  Who knew, with dreams?  
  
Even so, Mary seemed to have stabilized after the horrible ordeal, and was calmer now, and their parents took that as a good sign and didn't send her back.  Ib did her best to push it to the back of her mind.  
  
Until their second year of high school, when Ib confided in Mary that she had a terrible crush on the scruffy, goofy and sweet president of the school's go club, and an ugly look passed over Mary's face.  Ib had been startled-- "Oh, no, Mary, do you like him too?"  
  
"I don't like him at all," Mary answered.  "Not at all."  
  
Several weeks later he was found face-down in the school swimming pool.  Everyone was stunned-- he'd always seemed so happy-- but it had not really been the school's first suicide.  
  
Ib found herself watching Mary's face out of the corner of her eye during the memorial service.  She found nothing there.  None of the malicious joy she should have been ashamed for expecting, but no tears, either.  Just... absolutely no emotion at all.  She didn't know what to make of it.  
  
But it was the last time she told her sister about a crush.  
  
She met Walter in art class, the one elective that Mary didn't insist on taking with her, although her lips did quirk nastily and the question of why Ib wanted to take art herself always came up.  (It was so strange; one of the few things Ib remembered about Mary when they were very young was how amazing her drawings could get.  She remembered once Mary had drawn an entire, fully detailed town, although Ib's mother wasn't so sure.)  
  
He wasn't quite like a lot of the boys she had liked over the years; Walter was more clean-cut, more traditional.  While a lot of them before had sported messy hair and eccentric fashions, Walter had no fashion sense at all and kept his red hair neat and close-cropped.  His eyes, however, were a warm gray that sparked something old in her, and he laughingly declared that he would protect her like a white knight when she'd shivered at one of his more peculiar drawings.  
  
Walter liked to draw strange modern things.  Everything in his art had to _mean_ something; he couldn't just draw a toothbrush and say it was there because the room happened to be a bathroom.  The toothbrush had to be pointing in a certain direction, like a voyeur or a disapproval of whatever else existed in the scene.  And Walter pushed meanings like that onto other people's work.  
  
Mary tolerated Walter, because she thought he was just Ib's art class partner, and Ib didn't push her luck by admitting to anything.  It was nice, spending time with a boy without Mary's scrutiny.  And if she was honest with herself, that was one of the things Ib liked about Walter in general.  Even without his gray eyes and passion about his art, even without the fact that he was a boy, Walter wasn't Mary, and it was rare these days for Mary to give Ib room to breathe.  
  
Ib had read once that twins were the reincarnations of tragic lovers.  If Mary had been her lover in a past life, Ib was beginning to suspect it had been a murder-suicide...  
  
Then came the day that Walter kissed her without asking, and Ib, after a moment's consideration, decided to let him anyway.  She did like Walter quite a lot, so maybe that was enough reason, although the kiss was rougher than she'd have cared for.    
  
There was the clatter of a knife hitting the floor and Ib jerked back, turning to stare at her sister in the doorway.  Mary was looking down at the knife, as if she'd only just seen it, but it had obviously fallen from the plate in her hand, which bore the traces of jelly here and there.  
  
"Is there a problem, officer?" Walter asked, chuckling at himself.  There was something cold in the pit of Ib's stomach, staring at Mary staring down at the knife.  
  
Mary knelt, slowly, fingers sliding slowly onto the knife's grip like an old familiar weapon.  "Together forever," she muttered.  
  
"Mary?" Ib asked.  
  
Mary's eyes were unreal, always had been, the bluest of blues.  "If only two of us could make it out, which one would you choose, Ib?  Me or him?"  
  
Walter laughed nervously, staring at Mary's face.  "Geez, Ib, is your sister a psycho or what?"  
  
Ib knew the question Mary was asking, although she wasn't sure exactly why the phrase carried so much weight.  "I'd sacrifice myself, Mary," she said, and felt Walter flinch away from her.  
  
Mary's face changed.  "Ib, no!" she said, and she looked like herself again.  Her eyes flicked to Walter, and instead of murder Ib saw contempt.  Ib's fists relaxed.  Mary shook her head and smiled at Ib.  "Don't say things like that, okay?"  And she left.  
  
"She should learn to listen to herself," Walter muttered.  "What the hell was that?"  
  
"Try not to make Mary angry," Ib answered, and showed him to the door.  
  
She tried to act surprised when Walter was found hanging by one foot from the gymnasium rafters, blood trickling from his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> I like Mary just fine, but I'm a bit surprised at how confused the fandom is on her morality alignments, so to speak. "Careless Carrie" was done in crayon-- meaning that Mary's the person who wrote it. You don't want a person like that running around in the real world posing as Ib's sister, guys; "Together Forever" is probably the most disturbing out of the original endings possible. (It's debatable where it sits next to "Welcome to the World of Guertena" and "A Portrait's Demise.")
> 
> I'm not necessarily saying she's outright evil, but her empathy levels are a bit skewed, to say the least. I essentially see her as a sociopath with psychopathic tendencies.
> 
> Walter is a useful OC and will probably show up in other Ib-related works of mine (Actually I know he will because he was created for a different one.) He's probably in store for a lot of killing. :)


End file.
